


Call For Me

by orithea



Series: The Time Traveller's Flatmate [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orithea/pseuds/orithea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He travels to places significant to himself and those close to him. John spent the better part of nine years’ deployment in Afghanistan; only natural for Sherlock to end up there at least once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Wzywałeś mnie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7327234) by [tehanu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehanu/pseuds/tehanu)



> Prompt from Jude: Leave a “Call Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble about one character asking for another [be it at the brink of death/in a battlefield/knocking on the front door wounded, feel free to specify.]
> 
> Fits into The Time Traveller's Flatmate universe (though I think traveling so far is unlikely in the actual parameters of the work, hence an outtake). Will definitely make more sense if you read that first.

This is unusual. It’s hot, dry, not at all like the cold, drizzly November day that he just left. Always a shock to his body when it happens that way, not that there’s ever been so dramatic a change before. Obvious that he’s no longer in London—he’s in a tent, but there’s a solid floor, several beds, and a fine layer of grit clinging to his skin already. But it couldn’t be …  
  
No other explanation. He travels to places significant to himself and those close to him. John spent the better part of nine years’ deployment in Afghanistan; only natural for Sherlock to end up there at least once. Natural, but completely inconvenient. Of course his body has deposited him naked in the middle of a military base, one where he won’t be able to lie his way out of trouble. His only hope is finding John.  
  
A quick toss of the room earns him a pair of camouflage trousers, a brown tee shirt, and a pair of boots and socks that are sufficiently large, though not quite his size. Sherlock honestly feels bad for taking them—John has explained that borrowing each other’s things in the army is just not on—but it can’t be helped in this instance. He hopes that the clothing and the fact that he is nothing short of intimately familiar with military bearings and how to replicate the Captain Watson strut will be enough to make him blend in, despite the fact that his hair is obviously out of place here.  
  
He’s just trying to formulate a plan—can he approach someone, ask the whereabouts of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers without rousing suspicion?—when he hears shouting outside.  
  
Well. It was too much to hope that he wouldn’t be brought to this particular occasion.  
  
It’s easy to find the medical centre. It’s the source of the commotion, a frantic line of people streaming in and out. He counts three stretchers moving in before he reaches the doors himself and knows without a doubt that John is on one of them, or just behind.  
  
No one pays him much mind as he slips inside the building, following the stream of people headed for the operating theatre. Sherlock scans their faces in hopes that he’ll see one that looks familiar. He knows what the nurse who saved John’s life looks like, though the name slips his mind at the moment. He can’t find him, is getting frustrated, when finally he ducks his head into a room and knows he’s found the right one.  
  
It’s John there, lying spread out on the table with a team of surgeons. Someone is trying to calm him as the anesthetist sets to work, trying to get him to lie still and check the field dressings on his shoulder.  
  
John’s eyes are whirling around in panic and Sherlock’s hardly even in the room, just shoulders and head peeking through the door as he stands frozen in shock, but John finds him. John recognizes him. “Sherlock.” He sees, rather than hears, John’s lips form his name. Sherlock is unsure whether it’s the rushing panic in his head blocking out the sound, or whether John’s simply incapable of actual speech at the moment.  
  
He can’t respond, can’t call out for John and tell him that it’s going to be okay, because the force of seeing him spread out, bleeding, asking for him at a time like this, hits Sherlock too hard and that wrenching, skin pulling sensation takes over. He’s gone before he can process what’s happened.  
  
***  
  
“Mm,” John grumbles as Sherlock slides into his bed. “You’re warm for once. Where did you go?”  
  
Sherlock is still slightly damp from the shower—felt an overwhelming need to wash away the experience before coming back to bed. He pulls John close against him, his back to Sherlock’s front, and wraps a hand over his left shoulder. With one long finger he traces over the scar there. “I was here.”  
  
Still mostly asleep, John doesn’t understand. “Here? Downstairs?”  
  
“No, here,” he taps the healed wound with his finger and pictures it as he just saw it—fresh, livid, bleeding through hastily applied dressings. “Here, there, however you want to say it. When you got this.”  
  
“What?  _Christ_.” John shakes loose of Sherlock’s limbs and sits up in bed. He reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp then winces as the light is too bright. “You went to Afghanistan?”  
  
“Yes. I wondered if it might happen. I do seem to be drawn to traumatic events.”  
  
“So you saw me get shot?”  
  
“Not exactly. Found you in the medical centre.”  
  
“God. I don’t remember seeing you there,” John says with a slow, shaky breath.  
  
“You wouldn’t. Your friend, the nurse—”  
  
“Bill. Bill Murray,” John supplies.  
  
“Yes, Bill. He had your bleeding under control and they were sedating you when I popped up.”  
  
“ _Christ_ ,” John says again. “That’s just …”  
  
“Yeah,” Sherlock says quietly. “It was.”


End file.
